Much research has been done to increase the toughness and strength of polymeric materials and today such polymeric plastics are used in many demanding engineering applications. In order to increase the number of applications where such plastics can be effectively used, it is desirable that they have high impact toughness and/or be capable of use in very low temperature applications, e.g., at cryogenic temperatures where metals and ceramics are now used almost exclusively. Such plastic materials should also have good thermal insulating characteristics, be chemically stable, light weight, and fracture resistant.
One application in which their high strength-to-weight ratios make plastics a good, relatively low cost alternative to metal is in the use, for example, of certain automobile parts such as bumpers and fenders which require high impact toughness. In addition such parts as gasoline tanks are particularly well suited for using ultra tough plastic materials, particularly polyethylene materials which are chemically resistant to gasoline.
Another effective application for tougher plastic materials is in the fabrication of seamless belts where the lack of seams avoids the normal weakness that occurs with seamed belts. The use of an improved ultra tough plastic material would provide a strong but flexible seamless belt.
Further, in the computer industry, for example, many memory modules must operate at very low temperatures at which conventional printed circuit board materials become very brittle and subject to fracture and thus unsuitable for such purpose. The fabrication of low temperature, ultra tough plastic materials could have a large impact in such industry if the materials can be made much less brittle at the cryogenic temperatures involved.
In some applications an ultra tough plastic material may be substituted for aluminum, particularly where a high strength-to-weight ratio is important. In such applications it would be desirable that the tensile strengths of such materials be comparable to aluminum even though the densities thereof are much lower.